Obstacles are a given in athletics. They were for Russell White when he was a star running back in high school and at Cal.
They’re also omnipresent in White’s current as the Oakland Athletic League commissioner.
“It’s a fun job,” White said by phone from his Oakland office. “Every day’s a challenge. It’s just like the kids we serve — every day they have problems and decisions they have to make on the spot. It’s that way here in Oakland and on the other side of the mountain (more affluent areas), too.”
White mostly kept out of trouble growing up in Southern California and while setting rushing records at Crespi High in Encino. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have challenges — like in 1987 when the defending section champion Celts traveled to blue-collar Fontana to meet the Steelers in the section semis before 11,000 crazed Fohi fans.
And oh, it was raining like heck too — a slugfest in the mud commonly referred to as the “monsoon game” by veteran Steeler fans.
“That was an experience,” said White, who scored on the second play of the game on a 41-yard run, but saw his team fall 12-7 to eventual section titlist Fontana. “It was only a high school game, but we had a police escort for some reason. Their fans were throwing hot dogs and all kinds of food at us and it was raining cats and dogs and lizards and goats.”
Recalled Chris Ybarra of Redlands, who was a star two-way lineman for that Fontana team: “About the fourth or fifth play of the game White took the ball around the left side and he was gone. I thought to myself ‘That guy’s good.’ He had great size and vision and was one of these guys who was faster in person than on film. We knew we were facing one of the premier running backs.”
White’s athletic resume glistened. As a sophomore on varsity in 1986, he led Crespi to a mythical state title by rushing for 256 yards in the championship game. In the process he was named Cal-Hi Sports’ Mr. Football as the state player of the year. As a senior in ’88 he shook off injuries to rush for 1,379 yards and catch 43 passes for 529 yards to make all-state.
READING DISABILITY
Colleges, including Cal, drooled over the blue-chip back, who is the nephew of former USC star Charles White. The Golden Bears eventually gave him a football scholarship — though he was forced to sit out a season because of his Proposition 48 status due to a low Scholastic Aptitude score.
Later, it was discovered White had dyslexia, a reading disability that often causes the brain to transpose or mis-identify letters and numbers.
“When I was younger, everyone read at a certain pace,” White said. “But when you’re dyslexic, it doesn’t allow you to read at that pace. Ds look like B’s and P’s look like 9's. Everything looks jumbled. But the older I got, the more I learned to slow down and not go so fast.”
Eligible to play by 1990, White was a revelation for Cal fans. He scored the first time he touched the ball in a college game on a 99-yard kickoff return against Miami.
By the end of his junior year, he’d rushed for 1,177 yards and 14 touchdowns, was named a consensus first-team All-America and seemed a cinch to bolt Berkeley for the pros where he likely would have been a first-round pick.
Instead, White veered against the grain, staying at Cal to pick up his degree in social welfare.
“My mother would have killed me,” said White of the lure of choosing money over a diploma. “I was too close (to a degree) to jump ship. The money wasn’t that important to me. And after all that scrutiny I got as a freshman, it was something special for me to get a degree. There was a little touche’ involved.”
BATTLING ODDS
Two decades-and-change later, White is still jousting — against the blight of inner-city Oakland, against too-small budgets and squabbling adults and against the specter of student-athletes being reared in single-parent homes, as he was.
“When you grow up in a single-parent home, there’s more of an opportunity for mischief,” said White, a married father of three. “But it all came back to sports for me. I loved football too much to get in trouble.”
White didn’t see the field much for the Los Angeles Rams after getting plucked in the third round of the 1992 draft. He later was signed but didn’t play for the Green Bay Packers, played briefly with London of the World Football League and was in the 49ers’ training camp in ’86 before getting waived and retiring.
That prompted the second leg of his career which has ultimately landed him in Oakland. But first there were stints in a variety of places including as the athletic director and football coach at tiny Desert Chapel High of Palm Springs where he led the Eagles to two consecutive section titles.
A two-year stint as the Castlemont High of Oakland football coach followed not much later. White then eyed the vacant OAL commissioner’s job and took it down as surely as Patrick Willis dropping a ball-carrier.
And after one year in the job, the former Cal star thinks he knows the secret to success.
“I went to a commissioners’ meeting last month and one of the things they said is that you have to be a great mediator,” White said. “Eighty percent of what you do is mediation.”
Twenty-six years ago on a stormy night in Fontana, precious little mediation took place. Ex-Fontana great Kurt Bruich walked away a victor that night, but was impressed by White’s talent and is non-plussed by his current success.
“Russell White was a stud,” Bruich said. “He was the focal point of that entire team. It’s not a surprise to me that he’s doing well now because great athletes find ways around all sort of handicaps. If you sprain your ankle you find a way to excel despite the pain.”
*****
You can reach John Murphy at jmurphy@Prep2Prep.com and follow him on Twitter @PrepCat
